_Aigues-Vives._
Left Le Havre the day before yesterday; yesterday arrived at Nîmes;
my first journey! With no housekeeping to do and no cooking to look
after, and consequently with a slight feeling of idleness, to-day, the
23rd May, 188–, my twenty-fifth birthday, I begin this journal--without
much pleasure, a little for the sake of company; for, perhaps for
the first time in my life, I feel lonely--in a different, a foreign
land almost, one with which I have not yet made acquaintance. It has,
no doubt the same things to say to me as Normandy--the same that I
listen to untiringly at Fongueusemare--for God is nowhere different
from Himself--but this southern land speaks a language I have not yet
learnt, and to which I listen wondering.
_24th May._
Juliette is dozing on a sofa near me--in the open gallery which is the
chief charm of the house, built as it is after the Italian fashion. The
gallery opens on to the gravelled courtyard which is a continuation of
the garden. Without leaving her sofa, Juliette can see the lawn sloping
down to the piece of water, where a tribe of parti-coloured ducks
disport themselves and two swans sail. A stream which, they say, never
runs dry in the heat of any summer, feeds it and then flows through the
garden, which merges into a grove of ever-increasing wildness, more
and more shut in by the bed of a dried torrent on the one side and the
vineyards on the other, and finally strangled altogether between them.
Edouard Teissières yesterday showed my father the garden, the farm,
the cellars and the vineyards, while I stayed behind with Juliette--so
that this morning, while it was still very early, I was able to make
my first voyage of discovery in the park, by myself. A great many
plants and strange trees, whose names, however, I should have liked to
know. I pick a twig of each of them so as to be told what they are,
at lunch. In some of them I recognise the evergreen oaks which Jerome
admired in the gardens of the Villa Borghese or Doria-Pamphili--so
distantly related to our northern tree, of such a different character!
Almost at the furthest end of the park there is a narrow, mysterious
glade which they shelter, bending over a carpet of grass so soft to the
feet that it seems an invitation to the choir of nymphs. I wonder--I
am almost scared that my feeling for nature, which at Fongueusemare
is so profoundly Christian, should here become, in spite of myself,
half pagan. And yet the kind of awe which oppressed me more and more
was religious too. I whispered the words: “_hic nemus_.” The air was
crystalline; there was a strange silence. I was thinking of Orpheus,
of Armida, when all at once there rose a solitary bird’s song, so near
me, so pathetic, so pure, that it seemed suddenly as though all nature
had been awaiting it. My heart beat violently; I stayed for a moment
leaning against a tree, and then came in before anyone was up.
_26th May._
Still no letter from Jerome. If he had written to me at Le Havre, his
letter would have been forwarded.... I can confide my anxiety to no
one but this book; for the last three days I have not been distracted
from it for an instant, either by our excursion yesterday to Les
Baux, or by reading, or by prayer. To-day I can write of nothing else;
the curious melancholy from which I have been suffering ever since I
arrived at Aigues-Vives has, perhaps, no other cause--and yet I feel
it at such a depth within me that it seems to me now as if it had been
there for a long time past, and as if the joy on which I prided myself
did no more than cover it over.
_27th May._
Why should I lie to myself? It is by an effort of mind that I rejoice
in Juliette’s happiness. That happiness which I longed for so much, to
the extent of offering my own in sacrifice to it, is painful to me,
now that I see that she has obtained it without trouble, and that it
is so different from what she and I imagined. How complicated it all
is! Yes ... I see well enough that a horrible revival of egoism in me
is offended at her having found her happiness elsewhere than in my
sacrifice--at her not having needed my sacrifice in order to be happy.
And now I ask myself, as I feel what uneasiness Jerome’s silence causes
me: Was that sacrifice really consummated in my heart? I am, as it
were, humiliated, to feel that God no longer exacts it. Can it be that
I was not equal to it?
_28th May._
How dangerous this analysis of my sadness is! I am already growing
attached to this book. Is my personal vanity, which I thought I had
mastered, re-asserting its rights here? No; may my soul never use this
journal as a flattering mirror before which to attire itself! It is
not out of idleness that I write, as I thought at first, but out of
sadness. Sadness is a _state of sin_, which had ceased to be mine,
which I hate, from whose _complications_ I wish to free my soul. This
book must help me to find my happiness in myself once more.
Sadness is a complication. I never used to analyse my happiness.
At Fongueusemare I was alone, too, still more alone--why did I not
feel it? And when Jerome wrote to me from Italy, I was willing that
he should see without me, that he should live without me; I followed
him in thought, and out of his joy I made my own. And now, in spite of
myself, I want him; without him every new thing I see is irksome to me.
_10th June._
Long interruption of this journal which I had scarcely begun; birth of
little Lise; long hours of watching beside Juliette; I take no pleasure
in writing anything here that I can write to Jerome.
I should like to keep myself from the intolerable fault which is common
to so many women--that of writing too much. Let me consider this
notebook as a means of perfection.
* * * * *
There followed several pages of notes made in the course of her
reading, extracts, etc. Then, dated from Fongueusemare once more:
_16th July._
Juliette is happy; she says so, seems so; I have no right, no reason to
doubt it. Whence comes this feeling of dissatisfaction, of discomfort,
which I have now when I am with her? Perhaps from feeling that such
happiness is so practical, so easily obtained, so perfectly “to
measure” that it seems to cramp the soul and stifle it....
And I ask myself now whether it is really happiness that I desire, so
much as the progress towards happiness. Oh, Lord! preserve me from a
happiness to which I might too easily attain! Teach me to put off my
happiness, to place it as far away from me as Thou art.
* * * * *
Several pages here had been torn out; they referred, no doubt, to our
painful meeting at Le Havre. The journal did not begin again till
the following year; the pages were not dated, but had certainly been
written at the time of my stay at Fongueusemare.
* * * * *
Sometimes as I listen to him talking, I seem to be watching myself
think. He explains me and discovers me to myself. Should I exist
without him? I _am_ only when I am with him....
Sometimes I hesitate as to whether what I feel for him is really what
people call love--the picture that is generally drawn of love is so
different from that which I should like to draw. I should like nothing
to be said about it, and to love him without knowing that I love him. I
should like, above all, to love him without his knowing it.
I no longer get any joy out of that part of life that has to be lived
without him. My virtue is all only to please him--and yet, when I am
with him, I feel my virtue weakening.
* * * * *
I used to like learning the piano, because it seemed to me that I
was able to make some progress in it every day. That too, perhaps,
is the secret of the pleasure I take in reading a book in a foreign
language; not, indeed, that I prefer any other language whatever to
our own, or that the writers I admire in it appear to me in any way
inferior to those of other countries--but the slight difficulty that
lies in the pursuit of their meaning and feeling, the unconscious pride
of overcoming this difficulty, and of overcoming it more and more
successfully, adds to my intellectual pleasure a certain spiritual
contentment, which it seems to me I cannot do without.
* * * * *
However blessed it might be, I cannot desire a state without progress.
I imagine Heavenly joy, not as a confounding of the spirit with God,
but as an infinite, a perpetual drawing near to Him ... and if I were
not afraid of playing upon words I should say that I did not care for
any joy that was not _progressive_.
* * * * *
This morning we were sitting on the bench in the avenue; we were not
talking, and did not feel any need to talk.... Suddenly he asked me if
I believed in a future life.
“Oh! Jerome!” I cried at once, “it is more than hope I have; it is
certainty.”
And it seemed to me, on a sudden, that my whole faith had, as it were,
been poured into that exclamation.
“I should like to know,” he added. He stopped a few moments; then:
“Would you act differently without your faith?”
“How can I tell?” I answered; and I added: “And you, my dear, you
yourself, and in spite of yourself, can no longer act otherwise than as
if you were inspired by the liveliest faith. And I should not love you
if you were different.”
* * * * *
No, Jerome, no, it is not after a future recompense that our virtue is
striving; it is not for recompense that our love is seeking. A generous
soul is hurt by the idea of being rewarded for its efforts; nor does it
consider virtue an adornment; no, virtue is the form of its beauty.
* * * * *
Papa is not so well again; nothing serious, I hope, but he has been
obliged to go back to his milk diet for the last three days.
Yesterday evening, Jerome had just gone up to his room; Papa, who was
sitting up with me for a little, left me alone for a few minutes. I
was sitting on the sofa, or rather--a thing I hardly ever do--I was
lying down, I don’t know why. The lamp-shade was shading my eyes and
the upper part of my body from the light; I was mechanically looking at
my feet, which showed a little below my dress in the light thrown upon
them by the lamp. When Papa came back, he stood for a few moments at
the door, staring at me oddly, half smiling, half sad. I got up with a
vague feeling of shyness; then he called me:
“Come and sit beside me,” said he; and, though it was already late, he
began speaking to me about my mother, which he had never done since
their separation. He told me how he had married her, how much he had
loved her and how much she had at first been to him.
“Papa,” I said to him at last, “do, please, say why are you telling me
this this evening--what makes you tell me this just this particular
evening?”
“Because, just now, when I came into the drawing-room and saw you lying
on the sofa, I thought for a moment it was your mother.”
The reason I asked this so insistently was because that very evening,
Jerome was reading over my shoulder, standing leaning over me. I could
not see him, but I felt his breath and, as it were, the warmth and
pulsation of his body. I pretended to go on reading, but my mind had
stopped working; I could not even distinguish the lines; a perturbation
so strange took possession of me that I was obliged to get up from my
chair quickly, whilst I still could; I managed to leave the room for
a few minutes, luckily without his noticing anything. But a little
later, when I was alone in the drawing-room and lay down on the sofa,
where Papa thought I looked like my mother, at that very moment I was
thinking of her.
I slept very badly last night; I was disturbed, oppressed, miserable,
haunted by the recollection of the past, which came over me like a wave
of remorse.
Lord, teach me the horror of all that has any appearance of evil.
* * * * *
Poor Jerome! If he only knew that sometimes he would have but a single
sign to make, and that sometimes I wait for him to make it....
When I was a child, even then it was because of him that I wanted
to be beautiful. It seems to me now that I have never striven after
perfection, except for him. And that this perfection can only be
attained without him, is of all Thy teachings, my God! of the one that
is most disconcerting to my soul.
* * * * *
How happy must that soul be for whom virtue is one with love! Sometimes
I doubt whether there is any other virtue than love ... to love as much
as possible and continually more and more.... But at other times, alas!
virtue appears to me to be nothing but resistance to love. What! shall
I dare to call that virtue which is the most natural inclination of
my heart? Oh, tempting sophism! Specious allurement! Cunning mirage of
happiness!
This morning I read in La Bruyère:
“In the course of this life one sometimes meets with pleasures so dear,
promises so tender, which are yet forbidden us, that it is natural to
desire at least that they might be permitted: charms so great can be
surpassed only when virtue teaches us to renounce them.”
Why did I invent here that there was anything forbidden? Can it be
that I am secretly attracted by a charm more powerful and a sweetness
greater still than that of love? Oh! that it were possible to carry our
two souls forward together, by force of love, beyond love!
* * * * *
Alas! I understand now only too well: between God and him there is no
other obstacle but myself. If perhaps, as he says, his love for me at
first inclined him to God, now that very love hinders him; he lingers
with me, prefers me, and I am become the idol that keeps him back from
making further progress in virtue. One of us two must needs attain to
it; and as I despair of overcoming the love in my coward heart, grant
me, my God, vouchsafe me strength to teach him to love me no longer,
so that at the cost of my merits I may bring Thee his, which are so
infinitely preferable ... and if to-day my soul sobs with grief at
losing him, do I not lose him to find him again hereafter in Thee?
Tell me, oh, my God! what soul ever deserved Thee more? Was he not born
for something better than to love me? And should I love him so much if
he were to stop short at myself? How much all that might become heroic
dwindles in the midst of happiness!
_Sunday._
“God having provided some better thing for us.”
_Monday, 3rd May._
To think that happiness is here, close by, offering itself, and that
one only has to put out one’s hand to grasp it ...
This morning, as I was talking to him, I consummated the sacrifice.
_Monday evening._
He leaves to-morrow....
Dear Jerome, I still love you with infinite tenderness; but never more
shall I be able to tell you so. The constraint which I lay upon my
eyes, upon my lips, upon my soul, is so hard that to leave you is a
relief and a bitter satisfaction.
I strive to act according to reason, but at the moment of action the
reasons which made me act escape me, or appear foolish; I no longer
believe in them.
The reasons which make me fly from him? I no longer believe in them ...
And yet I fly from him, sadly and without understanding why I fly.
Lord! that we might advance towards Thee, Jerome and I together, each
beside the other, each helping the other; that we might walk along the
way of life like two pilgrims, of whom one says at times to the other:
“Lean on me, brother, if you are weary,” and to whom the other replies:
“It is enough to feel you near me ...” But no! The way Thou teachest,
Lord, is a narrow way--so narrow that two cannot walk in it abreast.
_5th July._
More than six weeks have gone by without my opening this book. Last
month, as I was re-reading some of its pages, I became aware of a
foolish, wicked anxiety to write well ... which I owe to _him_....
As though in this book, which I began only so as to help myself to do
without _him_, I was continuing to write to _him_.
I have torn up all the pages which seemed to me to be _well written_.
(I know what I mean by this.) I ought to have torn up all those in
which there was any question of him. I ought to have torn them all up.
I could not.
And already, because I tore up those few pages, I had a little feeling
of pride ... a pride which I should laugh at if my heart were not so
sick.
It really seemed as though I had done something meritorious, and as
though what I had destroyed had been of some importance!
_6th July._